Monday, 2/24/97
Sports Briefs
Men’s tennis in semis in tourney
The UCLA men’s tennis team is one victory away from defending
its USTA/ITA National Indoor Team Championship in Louisville,
Kentucky by virtue of its 4-3 semifinal victory over fourth-ranked
Mississippi.
The first and second rounds were no contest for the
second-ranked Bruins as they rolled over Fresno St. 4-2 in the
first round and whitewashed Duke 4-0 in the second round to advance
to the semifinals.
Mississippi came into the match with two singles players in the
top ten seeds and they got off to a quick start by capturing the
doubles point. The Bruins then proceeded to overwhelm the vaunted
Bulldog singles lineup, taking four of six matches, to claim their
4-3 victory.
In pivotal singles play, Eric Taino, Alex Decret, Jason Cook,
and Brandon Kramer all won in three sets, with Cook coming through
in a nerve-wracking third-set tiebreaker.
W. Tennis loses in Rolex quarterfinals
The USTA/ITA National Indoor Collegiate Team Tennis
Championships have been a difficult tournament for the UCLA women’s
tennis team and this year was no exception. The Bruins have
competed in the championships since their inception in 1988 and
have come close to victory, but have yet to obtain it.
Seventh-ranked UCLA faced William and Mary in first round on
Thursday and posted an easy win. The Bruins trounced the
ninth-ranked Tribe 4-0 and thus advanced to the quarterfinals where
they met their defeat.
The quarterfinal round placed the Bruins in competition with
Duke, a team that is ranked third in the ITA listings, although
Duke had lost to William and Mary in early February. While UCLA had
no trouble with William and Mary, they could not conquer Duke.
The WNITC is a tournament that has a different format from what
many college teams are used to. The scoring is calculated in the
same manner as in the men’s competition — i.e., all three doubles
matches count for only one point and in this case, are played
first. While this format may have been unusual for the Bruins, all
the teams competing were in the same position.
W. Water polo wins tight match
In front of a packed crowd, the UCLA women’s water polo team won
its first home game of the season, beating the UC Santa Barbara
Gauchos, 11-7.
"Excellent crowd," head coach Guy Baker said. "I just wish we
could have given the crowd a little bit better show, but Santa
Barbara did a really good job against us and they played a lot
better (than in the team’s match versus UCSB in the UCSD tournament
the week before)."
The Bruins, who defeated Santa Barbara last week in the
semifinals of the UC San Diego tournament, 12-3, saw a Gaucho squad
that was better prepared for this meeting.
"Everyone is going to improve as the season goes on, and we went
home and worked on some stuff after the (earlier) loss," UCSB head
coach Joe O’Brien said. "I think that the biggest thing is that
UCLA is such a mature team that we have to up our maturity level
when we play them and we worked on that.
"We still made some mistakes early in the game and UCLA is
veteran enough … that they are going to cash in on them."